June 27, 2025.

After the Supreme Court today decided the case of Trump v. Casa, limiting the power of

federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions, President Donald Trump claimed the decision was a huge victory

that would permit him to end birthright citizenship. That is, the principle that anyone born in the

United States, with very limited exceptions, is a U.S. citizen. To reporters, he claimed,

if you look at the end of the Civil War, the 1800s, it was a very turbulent time. If you take the end day, was it 1869 or whatever, but you take that exact day, that's when the case was filed, and the case ended shortly thereafter. This had to do with the babies of slaves very obviously.

This is a great example of a politician rooting a current policy in a made-up history.

There is nothing in Trump's statement that is true, except perhaps that the 1800s were a

turbulent time. Every era is. The 14th Amendment that established

birthright citizenship came out of a very specific moment and addressed a specific problem. After the

Civil War ended, in 1865, former Confederates in the American South denied their black neighbors basic rights.

To try to remedy the problem, the Republican Congress passed a civil rights bill in 1866,

establishing that all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed,

are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States, and such citizens of every race and color

shall have the same rights in every state and territory in the United States. But President Andrew Johnson, who was a Southern Democrat, elected in 1864 on a union ticket with President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican,

vetoed the 1866 Civil Rights Bill. While the Republican Party organized in the 1850s to fight the idea that there

should be different classes of Americans based on race, Democrats tended to support racial discrimination.

In that era, not only black Americans, but also Irish, Chinese, Mexican, and indigenous

Americans faced discriminatory state laws.

In contrast to the Democrats, Republicans stated explicitly in their 1860 platform that they were

opposed to any change in our naturalization laws or any state legislation by which the rights of citizens

hitherto accorded to immigrants from foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired and in favor of giving

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